


Idols and Ofuda

by ValiantBarnes (Cimila)



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Humour, Loyalty, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cimila/pseuds/ValiantBarnes
Summary: ANBU Red Team is, in Towa's humble opinion, the best of all currently operating ANBU teams.Hewillfight you on it.
Comments: 38
Kudos: 701
Collections: Dreaming of Sunshine Exchange 2020 B: Surprise Birthday Edition, Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	Idols and Ofuda

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/gifts).



> Hello my friend!(s)! I.. kind of smashed two of your prompts together? And also... didn't really?? Do either of them?????? Ha. Whoops. I hope you like it anyway!

Most ANBU missions were, by definition, extremely need to know only. It doesn’t surprise Towa that there are missions so need to know that they’re entirely off the books, word of mouth from Hokage-sama only. The surprise, mild though it is, comes from only being assigned such missions after Red Team became… Red Team. Proper Red Team. With Bat as well as Hawk-taicho. 

But then, perhaps it isn’t so surprising. The four of them work well together, increasingly well, the longer they remain a squad. 

(Towa had worried, that first mission they shared. Hokage-sama’s instructions were intentionally broad. If they had left trace of Konoha, if they had been sighted, Towa knew that there was enough rope to string along four necks. Most of their missions remain off the books, verbal only, but Towa no longer worries about such things.)

 _Infectious,_ Hawk-taicho had once muttered, giving the distinct impression that he was talking to Bat. Bat, in turn, had given the impression of a wide, unrepentant grin. This was, of course, before Hawk-taicho had come to fully accept their new team niche of ‘100% completion; 100% destruction.’ Goodbye to the defence specification they’d had for about one mission. But it worked well for them, despite the latter half flying almost directly in the face of ANBU’s usual modus operandi.

Hm. Maybe Taicho is right and Bat _is_ infectious. Towa’s missions before Bat were completely different; standard, or as close to standard as black ops ever got. Towa doesn’t mind. He never would have thought himself capable of such consistent, widespread destruction. Like Komachi, he went to ANBU for a reason. Never before had he enjoyed such things. He does now. Maybe it’s the company. 

He likes surveying their mission target and attempting to think of alternate ways to complete the mission. Likes hearing his squad mates give their own assessments of the situation. Likes the inside jokes that have started to bloom between them. (Likes how flat and serious Hawk-taicho plays himself to be, up until the exact moment it’s his deadpan comment that has them howling.)

Four very distinct minds coming together to - well. Towa would never admit aloud that sometimes they were just trying to make the largest amount of destruction possible, but it’s not wise to lie to yourself. So yes, when they get the chance they _are_ trying to recreate the landscape altering bliss of their first mission as Red Team.

Towa wouldn’t change their team for anything.

Red Team is _his team._ So what if they apply - what had Hawk-taicho said, tone completely bland, seven or eight verbal only debriefs ago? Ah, yes - creative solutions! Said solutions are effective, almost always efficient, and there’s something peculiarly team building about lurking nigh invisible in the shadows with three other people as they watch a bridge collapse in what felt like slow motion at the time. A support snap here, the judder of boards there. Rope snap after rope snap; a beautiful wave of wood based carnage. 

You can’t see a grin behind ANBU masks, but it’s been a long time since Towa’s been fooled into mistaking a blank mask for a lack of emotions. You don’t need to see a toothy smile to feel it. To bask in the moment with - friends? - and watch Bat wriggle in place with very well concealed excitement. Hawk-taicho gets that particular cant to his head which means he’s pleased. Komachi rubs her thumbs against her forefingers when she’s thinking and relaxed, taps them together with increasing speed when she’s excited. 

Towa knows his own tell is a barely noticeable twitch of his shoulders. A motion of leaning forward aborted before it’s really begun. Sometimes, if he’s really excited, he clicks his teeth together softly but quickly. Before Red Team, he had never done either of those things as Towa. Red Team is not the standard ANBU unit, for all their training is impeccable and their members just as deadly as any other. 

The few rough edges they’d had in those first few missions have since smoothed out. No one so much as twitches when said ‘creative solutions’ are voiced, now. Not that Hawk-taicho had reacted at all when Bat had first come out with her mountain moving scheme. He’d been exasperated, instead. Towa cannot say that he knows Bat as well as Hawk-taicho does, considering Hawk-taicho knows her out of mask, but he knows her well enough now. One day there will be another ‘steal the river’ moment and instead of pausing in surprise and disbelief and a handful of other shameful feelings, Towa will get to lean in closer, encouraging.

Towa has pride in his squad and their achievements. And despite the way it seems that nothing can stand in their way - warehouses, bridges, the very mountains themselves - he is not cocky about it. Any arrogance was beaten out of him in training - Bull and Magpie most recently, but more before them - and it’s never really been able to take root, after that. Despite their accomplishments they stay wary on missions, sliding through shadows and exercising all caution.

So yes, he does have great pride in them. And yes, he _will_ continue to stare down anyone in the canteen who makes snide comments about their less redacted missions. They don’t quail from his dead eyed stare; well trained ANBU don’t tend to flinch away from such things. But his pointed and fixed attention draws the notice of the others. If lowly Towa’s glare isn’t enough to make seasoned ANBU rethink their choices - Wolf-taicho’s is.

...Wolf-taicho who is (technically? Officially? Halfway? Actually just lulling people into a false sense of security?) retired and should not be there, according to Cat-taicho. Responsible Cat-taicho. Who piles his tray with food specifically to swap with Wolf-taicho. Who nonchalantly slid a locker key along the table to the other man, even as he was chastising Wolf-taicho that only current ANBU were allowed to have lockers. 

Towa, like many others, is pointedly Not Asking about Wolf-taicho’s presence, or Cat-taicho’s routine but dispassionate attempts to remove Wolf-taicho from headquarters. Or that thing they do, where Wolf-taicho will tap Cat-taicho’s mask with his own, forehead to forehead, as they pass in a corridor and Cat-taicho drops whatever he was doing to about face and follow Wolf-taicho.

(Towa may or may not be in on the betting pool about Wolf-taicho and Cat-taicho. No, he will not tell you his bet. ...Yes he utilised insider information in the form of Bat and Hawk-taicho in order to make his bet. No, he has no remorse.)

Towa flickers his hands in friendly and cheerful greeting to his squad mates as they walk into their shared room. Like all permanent squads, they’ve developed their on non-standard, ANBU adjacent signs. Mainly little half movements added here and there, for a mood or emotion. They’ve had to add several signs of increasing specificity for various explosions, detonations and other related destruction words. 

“Your early,” He says as Bat glides into the room, Hawk-taicho on her heels.

“Yep. Had a hankering for canteen gruel.” She chirps, throwing herself on her bed.

“Armour repair.” Hawk-taicho fills in quietly. Now that Towa’s looking, Bat’s right vambrace is looking suspiciously clean and unworn, as is Hawk-taicho’s left greave. Huh.

“Shut the fuck up,” Komachi half snarls, half begs from the top bunk where she’s attempting to bury herself even further into the very soft, non-standard blanket she keeps in her trunk for times just like this.

 _Late mission?_ Bat signs, curious.

 _Hungover,_ Towa replies, snickering. Once he’s formed the fist, he adds a little flourish that they employ to indicate ‘happy/joy/cheer’ to absolutely ensure his glee comes across. Komachi’s hangovers are terrible, all consuming, and a guarantee after two shots. Towa doesn’t get hungover. A quirk of genetics. A beautiful combination, as far as Towa’s concerned. 

Bat mimes an exaggerated wince and then, after a pause, signs her own laughter. They have a few hours before the Hokage expects them, so they chat to each other silently for a few minutes, catching up on their days, before they settle down to rest before their next mission.

Hawk-taicho and Bat take their nap in the same bed and Towa smiles at them. He had worried, a little bit, when it turned out that they both knew each other out of the mask. Worried they wouldn’t be a real team of four, but two teams of two. Hawk-taicho and Bat, Komachi and himself. It happened sometimes, when existing teams get paired together. It works well enough - they’re all too well trained to let something like new squad mates get in the way for more than a training session or two - but there’s almost always a noticeable divide between them. Towa’s seen such things before. Seen them merge seamlessly, too, but Towa wouldn’t have the first clue how to make that happen for his own squad.

That’s the job for someone with more than… Towa taps his fingers quietly against his chest. One, two, three - four friends. Two if you don’t count Hawk-taicho and Bat. (Which he does.) Wow, that actually a bit pathetic. And it very much means that forming a whole team out of two pairs would be very much out of his capabilities. 

It is fortunate, then, that the pre-existing comradery between Hawk-taicho and Bat did not exclude Towa and Komachi. For this, Towa is… grateful. Happy. He cannot imagine a Red Team with a split down the middle. Can’t imagine them all as anything less than friends.

He’s been ANBU too long to think that it’s especially weird that three faceless ninja are some of his closest friends, but - some days Towa still finds it weird to have friends, period. He almost wishes that they were a masks off squad, just so he could spend more time with them, but he’ll take what he can get. Sharing a table in the canteen, trading food and scrolls and stories between them. The thick blanket that’s technically Komachi’s but makes the rounds on all their bunks, the one that shouldn’t smell like anything but detergent yet still carries hints of people scent anyway. 

The blanket is large enough to span two bunks, and Komachi’s too desperate to sleep to cocoon herself properly and completely. A corner of the blanket hangs down, far enough that Towa can trap it between his cheek and his cushion and press his face against it. 

  
  


Red Team’s closer to Waterfall than Grass, but still mired deep in Iwa, when it happens. A swift retreat through enemy territory, sprinting flat out for close to two days in the approximate direction of Konoha. It’s worth it. They’re on the right side of Iwagakure now, and still with no pursuers. No trail, no hint of their presence, of Konoha sticking its fingers where Iwa would say they don’t belong. Towa thinks that, if they really didn’t belong, Iwa should probably guard their borders better. 

They’re also now far enough away from - _the scene of the crime!_ Cackles a voice that could honestly be either Bat or Komachi. Their voices are distinct, but less so when it’s Towa’s own mind mimicking them, fatigue slurring every thought. Either way, it sounds delightfully cheerful. It’s also not exactly incorrect, considering the several, ah, _incidents_ that took place over the course of the mission. There maybe been some… escalation… over the course of the mission. 

And the plan was, to begin with, a wild plot hatched between Bat and Komachi. Breaking and entering, burglary _and_ arson.

(Hawk-taicho may have tried to share a long suffering glance with Towa. Towa _may_ have been too busy adding vandalism to the list to notice. He will neither confirm nor deny.)

They have the items they were sent for: three items, distributed between them. Bat has the aged scroll, Towa the newer one, and Hawk-taicho has the small jade idol. They’d all been sealed away into Konoha standard scrolls and tucked back out of sight. Mission almost success. Return to Konoha with the mission objectives and that’ll be another complete mission for Red Team’s file. 

They’re far enough away from the ‘ransacked from mercenaries and/or bandits’ warehouse that Hawk-taicho feels it’s safe enough to break for longer than a handful of minutes. 

The night is cloudy and bright, moon illuminating the thin cloud cover and the night for miles. It’s a slight risk to ascend the nearby mountain, less so with their training. It’s their best option for shelter, despite how much more comfortable they’d feel hidden in the small forest clinging to one side of the mountain. 

Similarly to their first time in Iwa as a team, the crevice they find to wedge themselves in is only accessible from above. It’s long and narrow at the top, but wide enough to lay in at the bottom. They split the watch, two and two. Towa’s with Bat for first watch, the dual losers of four-way janken. 

It happens at changeover. Towa still doesn’t know what happens, precisely. A spark draws attention as Towa wakes Komachi and Hawk-taicho, Bat still perched at the far end of the crevice rim to cover shift switch. Four sets of eyes snap to Hawk-taicho’s pack. It’s not even a second before he has it cut off and thrown away, into the far corner; the opposite far corner to Bat, of course.

Bat slinks down the wall as the pack starts to crumble, light shining brighter from it. They’re all tense, on edge, as the material sheds away to reveal the storage scroll. The thing is - fuck, Towa doesn’t know. Glowing intermittently, or always glowing but sometimes less. Rippling in a way that makes Towa’s hair stand on end.

Bat signs for them to back away and Towa and Komachi begin to follow her order. Hawk-taicho doesn’t move from his position behind Bat’s shoulder. Consequently, Towa doesn’t take more than a half step before he stills again. Not far enough to satisfy Bat, not at all, but Towa’s not about to leave either of them behind. Komachi, he knows, has also stopped her retreat. 

“It’s…” Bat starts, stops. It drives the tension higher. She slides forward the slightest amount, head tilting, apparently able to make something of the scene before them. 

_“OUT!”_ She orders, leaping backwards and up, towards the surface, and Towa follows suit and hauls ass up and out of their hidey hole. They’re all four of them neck and neck, almost out and over.

They don’t quite get to the ‘out’ part of the plan.

  
  


Oh that’s a whole lot of fucking pain. Aaah holy _shit_ what the actual _fuck._

Towa snaps his eyes open. His vision is bleary, the light of the sun blinding, but Towa squints through it just enough to identify his surroundings. Sky, ow sun bright, rock, mountain scrub. One, two, three familiar figures, laid out in the open and unmoving on this fucking mountain side and that is a problem. Towa’s body is aching, but he levers it up regardless. He’s got team to assess and protect. No time to give into whatever his body wants him to do.

One of his foot slips in loose shale, quiet but loud in the silence, and his three ANBU jerk into defensive positions. Not quite coordinated, clearly just as in pain and out of it as Towa feels, but that’s good. Very good. Means they’re not too injured to defend themselves. Better, means they’re not dead.

Whatever it was that had knocked them out - Towa remembers the light and not much else - doesn’t seem to have done any permanent damage. 

“Status update,” Hawk-taicho rasps, and they all chime in with the same thing, give or take some personal flair.

 _Sore but breathing,_ from Komachi. 

_Better than that time we had to sleep on a boat,_ Bat drops some delightful information. 

_I would like to be unconscious again,_ Towa checks in. 

“Mission objective two is gone.” Komachi reports. Shit. Towa checks his own pack and - yeah. Shit. 

“Mission objective three gone.” And the idol was also probably gone, considering whatever the fuck happened last night. They were probably looking at their first total mission failure as a team. Damn. It had to happen sometime, but it doesn’t make it suck any less. 

“The crevice we slept in is also gone.” Bat says, crouched a little ways away, and that is. Very concerning. Everyone's body language is carefully shut down, all attention suddenly on their surroundings. Bat’s still crouched where their last nights refuge should have been and, yep, there’s nothing but rock and a small, hardy plant.

None of them like any of the implications of the crevice being closed over. Towa doesn’t think of any implications further than: someone got close enough to his unconscious team to use a jutsu. The thought forces him to stand properly, stalking down the mountain.

 _Outward patrol,_ he signs, and Hawk-taicho acknowledges. Towa’s almost out of range when he hears Bat mutter, _‘I really hope I’m wrong about this.’_

  
  


The border outpost that Hawk-taicho checked in at before they crossed into Iwa isn’t there. Hawk-taicho relays the information without inflection.

“Interesting.” Bat adds some sort of mark to the her shiny new vambrace. It looks like it’d be illegible even if it was big enough to read. Some sort of code. Makes sense. Not like they bring much paper on these sorts of missions and she needs somewhere to write down… whatever she’s writing down. Something about their current situation. 

Towa doesn’t know if she knows anything more about this than he does, but is glad that someone is apparently trying to figure out what’s wrong. Because there is something wrong, even past the entire missing outpost. Something in the air, maybe, but they’ve all checked and filtered for poison, genjutsu, anything that could produce such a thing. There’s nothing. Just the entire world feeling slightly left of center. 

Hawk-taicho signals them and the fall out, springing back into trees that also aren’t quite right. He can’t put his finger on it. They seem different to what he’d seen when they last passed by, but more or less the same. At least Towa’s not alone. Hawk-taicho’s at point, Towa and Komachi the wings, Bat taking the rear. Whatever happens, his team’s gonna make it safe back to Konoha. 

At least _she_ can’t disappear like a small outpost can.

  
  


“So when the sealing scroll unravelled,” Bat says, as though what the idol’s scroll had done was anything close to ‘unravelling.’ Melting, distorting the very fabric of existence, turning into fireworks. Any of those seemed more applicable than something as mundane as unravelling. “Potentially some sort of dead mans switch or delayed protection inlaid on the idol, I think it caused some sort of resonance with the other scrolls.”

“The contents of which we have no idea about.”

“Yep. Reeeally wishing I managed to sneak a peak now.” Her voice is cheery. Painfully so. Determinedly upbeat, even while explaining exactly how fucked they are. Perhaps because of it.

“The one time you’re able to control your curiosity.” Hawk-taicho laments. 

“Terrible timing, I know. So the idol interfered with the sealing scroll, which had a domino effect on the other scrolls, which probably had some sort of sealing techniques hidden in them. Likely… time/space seals.” 

“That would explain our current predicament.” Towa says mildly, as though they’re not sitting at the top of an uncarved Hokage Mountain. Forest spreads out below them, unbroken by any sort of settlement. The Naka River winds its way along peacefully, ignorant of its missing companion. Towa wishes he could take his previous thought back, cause Konoha is _gone_. 

“The real question is, time travel or dimension travel? Or both, I guess. That’s also a possibility.”

Towa really, _really_ wishes it wasn’t. He’s not freaking out, he’s too well trained for that, but he does shift in place slightly. It’s no panicked laughter, but it’s more of an admission than he’d give anyone other than the people before him.

“Any idea on how to get back?” Hawk-taicho asks, attention on Bat. Interesting. Another piece of the puzzle that he and Komachi definitely do not have any secret bets riding on. 

“Maybe if I’d seen what was on the scrolls. Without that, very little. I can try but…” She trails off, seemingly at a loss.

“So we’re stuck here. For now at least.” Towa kind of wants to go back to being unconscious on that mountain in Iwa. Less complications. On the plus side, he doesn’t exactly have many people waiting on his return in Konoha, so if they’re stuck here forever it’s no large blow to his social life. Three fourths of it are here with him, after all. 

“I can’t say anything about possible… other dimensions,” Komachi says, clearly thrown off by the notion. Towa’s still hung up on the ‘no Konoha’ thing, but he’s sure he’ll get to freaking out about the rest eventually.

“But I would say we’re in the past. A past. One of the ninja we saw, in Waterfall, he was wearing a clan symbol, but the clan fell in either the second or first war, I can’t quite remember. But I _do_ know they were wiped out completely.”

Bat nods, Hawk-taicho nods, Towa nods in solidarity. He has no idea what to do with this information. Hopefully one of the other two have some idea. _Any_ idea. Hawk-taicho tilts his head, assessing both Towa and Komachi. Towa can’t help the way he straightens. As much as anyone can straighten while crouching in an ANBU conference on a tree branch. (They’re not even Hashirama trees… do Hashirama trees exist yet?! Towa is Not Thinking About This.)

“If there are no objections, I think it would be best to become a masks off squad. If it’s going to take time before we can figure out how to get home, staying permanently in our masks becomes infeasible.” Not to mention ANBU masks probably stand out a hell of a lot more than whatever their faces look like, in the past. It’s sensible. Towa would have no objection even if it were a ridiculous suggestion. He’s been willing to show his face to them for months. 

He nods his assent. Komachi echoes him a moment later. 

“I assumed we were masks on mostly for your benefit, anyway.” Bat says, also nodding. Two pairs of eyes snap to Hawk-taicho. The curiosity Towa had suppressed in order to be the best team mate he could be surging back up. Hawk-taicho lifts a hand to his mask, doesn’t hesitate in the motion even though Towa thinks he maybe wants to. The four of them have been together for many months and many missions now; he knows their body language. 

Dark eyes to go along with his dark hair; pretty face. Recognisable. Black eyes burn red for the briefest of seconds as if in confirmation. Uchiha Sasuke. ...Wait. Does that mean - Bat takes her mask off to reveal Nara Shikako, the absolute monster of a girl. 

“This explains so much.” Towa says.

“You owe me 5000 yen.” Komachi says.

Fuck.

“Do you _know_ how much _paperwork_ I have to do because of you!?” Towa whines, letting his entire body sink closer to the branch. It’s the main reason he hadn’t put his money on Bat being the Nara girl, despite the obvious connection to Wolf-taicho. Pure spite - apparently for himself. 

“Uh. Sorry?” She says, caught between wary and amused. She clearly settles for amused when Towa lets himself slide dramatically off the branch, dangling upside by the soles of his feet, letting out a pitiful wail.

“He moonlights as a mission desk ninja,” Komachi says.

“Oh! Then you’re probably…” Bat - Nara? - snaps her fingers a few times, trying to think. Towa’ll be surprised if she gets it; his hair colour isn’t that much of a clue, after all. 

“Ikeda Eiji!” She points her fingers straight at him. Towa blinks up at her. Climbs back up onto the branch. Takes his mask off.

“How the actual fuck.” Eiji says. Komachi cackles on the branch next to him.

“You’re one of about three mission desk ninja that doesn’t try to either flee the room or paste up ofudas when we walk in. One is an older woman and the other Iruka-sensei.” Hawk… Uchiha? Uchiha-taicho? Uchiha-san? ...Kun? says. 

“Huh.” Clearly refusing the ridiculous ofudas that are liberally thrown around when any of the Lucky Sevens are spotted returning from a mission was a serious blow to his non-ANBU cover identity. 

Komachi is still laughing when she takes her mask off and becomes Kimiko again.

“I’m Sasaki Kimiko. Pleased to meet you.” She says, and the two teenagers echo her courtesy.

“What now?” Kimiko asks, and ah, _there_ it is. The grin that makes his thankfully only sometimes co-workers break out the ofuda.

“Now we plan.”

  
  


If Eiji thought Nara Shikako was a terrifying monster of a girl when their only interactions were over the mission desk and through gossip - now he _knows_ she’s a terrifying monster of a teen sealing master. (Although, the sealing part was never in doubt. Eiji just didn't have enough exposure to know what that meant.) 

She’s Eiji’s little sister now. He doesn’t care what the Nara’s will have to say about that. These two deadly, stabby little teenagers are an absolute _delight_. Sasuke's also getting claimed, but he doesn't have any family to fight over it. None who would fight for him, anyway, though he definitely still has a blood relation that Eiji wants to fight. He'll have to train harder.

(They let him burn down an older yet much newer version of the warehouse from their interrupted/failed/absolute fuck up of a mission, and Eiji and Kimiko quietly discuss whether or not it’s possible to reverse adopt themselves into the Uchiha clan.)

**Author's Note:**

> Towa's perspective of 'Nara Shikako is a terror teenager and a monster' doesn't actually change, I guess, it just gets the addendum of 'and I love her.'


End file.
